Yachats Oregon Writer Rick Schultze

If you’ve ever seen, been in, or studied mass protests by for a variety of causes from Civil Rights, political Ideologies, Religious Beliefs, Human Rights and Anti-War rallies and others, then you’ve seen similarities in the way the protests are conducted.

Here in this country there has been bloodshed, arrests and jail time and other methods of controlling protests. But we’ve developed into a nation that has become a very strong advocate of peaceful protests and for the most part recently that has been the norm. Of course there will always be a potential for trouble when you get masses of people bent on rallying against what they consider unfair or unethical practices by the powers in control.

In other parts of the world that isn’t the case in many instances. The Tienanmen Square protest in 1989 in China was one of the worst case scenarios with death and prison being the way the government handled that. In other regimes you have little choice but to play by the governments or dictator’s rules. There is no American Civil Liberties Union to call for help and protection, and the rulers in those situations know that and use that as their hammer to keep the masses in line.

However, we’ve been witnessing a massive protest in Iran over the results of the recent election with the incumbent seemingly still in power while thousands of voters are calling foul. While sadly to say, that isn’t uncommon in many countries, what is different is the way the protest is being played out on the world stage despite the common practice of governments cracking down and blocking media coverage. By not allowing the media, especially from the Western world, to report on what’s going on, these counties have successfully been able to shove debatable practices under the rug while the rest of the world, while skeptical, has no visual proof of what’s really happening at the time.

In this case in Iran the traditional media has been shut down but they haven’t been able to silence the Facebook and Twitter feeds coming out of there or the pictures being taken by cell phones that are making it onto YouTube as videos. This modern and unique reporting is changing the way protests are being held. There are familiar scenes of street violence, police force and angry people, but it’s all being seen in real time, a totally different twist to the protest. It’s much harder to ignore the injustices and armed with these tools people all around the world can watch just what is going on and you know they are going to be paying a lot more attention to the protests and possibly reacting to them like never before in protest history. Future anti protest forces are going to have to clean up their acts because they are no longer invisible in real time to the world and for some that’s not good news!

As Bob Dylan said “the times they are a changing”.
To reach Rick Schultze email: yarick@pioneer.net